At the Louvre: Poems by 100 Contemporary World Poets - by Antoine Caro & Edwin Frank & Donatien Grau (Paperback)

About the Book

"The Louvre palace and museum belong to the history of poetry. Malherbe, in his most famous poem, "Consolation to Monsieur Du Pâerier", spoke of the "barriers of the Louvre". Baudelaire, in "The Swan", declares: "Also in front of this Louvre an image oppresses me. " This entire masterpiece could be read as an invocation of a palace-museum in metamorphosis in the heart of a Paris in transformation, of a 19th century that is being invented with the museum. Apollinaire was also involved in the Louvre, and many others after them"--

Book Synopsis

New poems from 100 of the world's brightest contemporary poets, all about a common subject: the Louvre--exploring the many pleasures, provocations, and surprises that the museum and its collection inspire.

Of the world's great museums, the Louvre is the most encompassing, a sumptuous collection that includes not only some of the most celebrated works of art of all time, but fascinating, perplexing, splendid, and beautiful objects of all kinds, all housed in a building, itself monumental, that was once the seat of the kings of France. In the grand corridors and multiplying backrooms of the Louvre, the history of the world and the history of art and the history of how we look and think about art and its place in our lives challenge and delight us at every corner. Few other public spaces are at once so haunted and so alive.

A unique collaboration between New York Review Books and the Louvre Museum, At the Louvre presents a hundred poems, newly commissioned exclusively for this volume, by a hundred of the world's most vibrant poets. They write about works from the museum's collection. They write about the museum and its history. They write what they see and feel, and together they take us on a tour of the museum and its galleries like no other, one that is an irresistible feast for the ear and mind and eye.

Some of the poets in At the Louvre: Simon Armitage; Barbara Chase-Riboud; Hélène Dorion; Jon Fosse; Fanny Howe; Kenneth Goldsmith; Lisette Lombé; Tedi López Mills; Precious Okoyomon; Charles Pennequin; Blandine Rinkel; Yomi Şode; Krisztina Tóth; Jan Wagner; Elizabeth Willis.

Review Quotes

"At its best, poetry about art, or ekphrasis if you like, makes visual recognition audible. This portrait of the largest museum in the world, by a motley and reaching group of living poets, goes a step further, capturing not just the hidden comedy of the sculptor Pierre Puget's ancien régime "Hercules at Rest"...or the sadness in Jean-Antoine Watteau's "Embarkation to Cythera"...but also all the happenstance, ritual, baggage and reverence that comes with tracking down artworks in an actual building." -- The New York Times Best Art Books of 2024

"Such a diversity of voices and styles, translated from the French, Dutch, German, Chinese, and more, surprises and entices in turn. And it's this air of unpredictability which, rather than scattering the mind, goes a long way toward upping the anthology's readability." --Eric Bies, Full Stop

About the Author

Antoine Caro has headed the French publishing house Éditions Seghers since 2021.

Edwin Frank was born in Boulder, Colorado, and educated at Harvard College and Columbia University. He is the editorial director of the NYRB Classics series and the author of Snake Train: Poems 1984-2013 and Stranger Than Fiction: Lives of the Twentieth-Century Novel.

Donatien Grau serves as Head of Contemporary Programmes at the Louvre Museum.

Laurence des Cars has been the director of the Louvre Museum since 2021.